


Hard To Find

by CatalpaWaltz



Series: Fortress!Verse [3]
Category: 18th & 19th Century CE RPF, American Revolution RPF, Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Fortress!verse, Harem!verse, M/M, Shaving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 19:11:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7281172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatalpaWaltz/pseuds/CatalpaWaltz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Less a fic than a fragment of meta in prose form. Fortress!verse (because I was trying to figure out how to shoehorn Feelings into this thing and I think I’m getting there )</p><p>Basically, if anyone thought that Ben’s self-valuation issues disappear just because he got himself a truly world-class sexual education and has spent hours upon hours being told what a good boy he is, think again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hard To Find

**Author's Note:**

> This probably won't make much sense unless you've read Fortress Round My Heart, just as an aside.

Like all men, the General wants different things at different times. This is how Ben comes to understand it.

He sends for the Marquis when he requires someone to cool his temper or patch up his wounded pride: when Lafayette’s solicitous tenderness, uncomplicated by differences of rank or social anxiety, can help him to regain his balance and remind him of his worth.

He sends for Hamilton when he wants someone to talk back, to challenge him, and (presumably) when he craves the kind of filthy nonsense Hamilton so eloquently composes in his throes. He wants Hamilton when he wants to remember what it feels like to truly have _control_ of a situation, to come up against an obstacle and overcome it (for Hamilton will always give in, but he never goes without a fight.)

When he’s exhausted , or feeling his age, or just wants to be entertained without having to do any of the work himself, he sends for Hamilton and Laurens together, or Hamilton and Lafayette, or all three of them at once. Sometimes Ben is included in these displays, but very rarely.

All this Ben is able to suss out from what information the General’s aides relay to him and from his own skills of observation. It seems, for all intents and purposes, a perfectly logical, functional system. The trouble is, Ben is not sure where he fits into this scheme of things.

He tries not to worry that Washington has no real use for him the way he does for the others, that he was pulled into Washington’s orbit because he was convenient and available and not because he has something of his own to offer. He does his best.

But time passes, the war moves south, and things change.

They begin to shift listlessly between a handful of New York headquarters, their only real duty now keeping the British garrison penned up in the city. The inaction takes its own toll on the composition of Washington’s staff.

Lafayette departs with a company of his own for Virginia, to defend Washington’s homeland precisely because Washington himself cannot. Laurens, too, is long since gone from headquarters, now half a world away in France on a mission he cannot relish. Hamilton is now a married man, a man of standing, _connected_ in a way that he never was before, and it has given him the freedom to do as he has long since wished to do, that is to say: to leave.

Which leaves only Ben.

He’s far more cavalry officer than intelligence officer now, his network made useless even as it achieves its greatest efficiency. He could, if required, provide Washington with all the information he could want to plan an attack on New York. His assets give him everything: how many troops remain stationed in the city, who their commanders are, their weak points, their guard schedules, /everything/. What he cannot give him is the manpower or the ships to make the attempt, nor the will in Congress, nor the funds from France.

Often he thinks he would so much rather return to the early days of the war, even with all their pyrrhic victories and defeats, labors, and dangers. Anything would feel better than this interminable waiting.

Since he must now become all things, his encounters with Washington often take on different flavors, always depending on how the tides of the war ebb and flow. He knows what it means to comfort him after a defeat (on the field or on the floor of Congress, both of which seem to have equal power to sour his mood) to gild his laurels in victory, to soothe his spirits frayed by boredom and delay. Ben sometimes seeks him out precisely when he feels most acutely his own uselessness, his own inability to serve their cause as he would wish, and when his desperation to do so has reached such heights that even the prospect of serving in this particular…capacity no longer holds the power to shame.

Sometimes he gets to serve in other ways.

“Lean your head back, sir,” he says, his voice scarcely more than a whisper. Carefully, so carefully, he scrapes the blade of the straight razor over the planes of Washington’s neck, vigilant for any patches of stubble he might miss.

He wipes the lather away with a towel, and returns for another pass, Washington’s eyes locking onto his as he does so.

He has to strip Washington’s identity from him in these moments, has to forget who and what he is, what he represents, else the spectacle of the exposed skin of his commander’s throat will send him shaking with sudden anxiety, the weight of a terrible responsibility – the lifeblood of the nation, underneath his fingers, _vulnerable._

“Nearly done, sir.”

A few more swipes up across the angle of Washington’s jaw, one patch he missed on his chin, and he’s finished.

“Thank you, Benjamin,” he says, his eyes soft. He looks so tired, so much older than he did when they met, in those heady days after the victory at Princeton.

Ben is suddenly viscerally aware of their position, which he had forgotten in his focus on completing his task. He stands between Washington’s spread legs, where he’s sitting on a high pine stool. He’s had to lean in close to see what he’s doing in the fading light, hadn’t even noticed the points of contact between his thighs and Washington’s knees until this moment.

“Of course, sir.”

He doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to step away. But Washington had been complaining just moments ago about how much he had left to do before he slept, and Ben will not risk making himself a nuisance.

“Is there anything else I might do for you, sir?”

He wants to get on his knees. He wants to forget, to make Washington forget, every terrible thing that has passed and every terrible thing yet to come. But this is just one more of the many, many things he does not have the power to give. Still, Washington reaches out, rests a warm, heavy hand on Ben’s shoulder, looks up at him with eyes shadowed by an exhaustion that Ben cannot imagine.

“Yes. There is.”

So Ben stays.


End file.
